Leaving Eden
by mellish
Summary: She does not know the meaning of sin, and he refuses to be the one who teaches her, although it gets more difficult the longer she stays. Yuffentine.
1. The Apple

A/N: Set after AC (or even just FFVII in general). I wanted to write Vincent. I also wanted to write angst. D: Another maybe-this-idea-applies-better-elsewhere fic but...oh well. Here it is. First of three parts, the rest to be uploaded sometime.

**Leaving Eden**

_**The Apple (Before)**_

The door is broken when she shows up and proclaims her arrival, but there is something disconcerting about the way she smiles and inclines her head, something dangerous about the way her bag weighs so heavily in her hand. The slope of her body has changed, the mischievous quality of her eyes the only feature in her face that has not become more slender, or pretty. When he attempts to shoo her away his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and he cannot finds the words, so she shoves past him in a great display of comfort and settles down on an ill-kept couch.

She seems to intend to stay, and he distracts himself by asking her what she has been doing, to which she readily replies _materia-hunting and Wutai-esque duties_, although the real question is probably _what she plans to do_.

"This is truly unexpected," he mumbles, and she replies,

"Yay for surprises. I can't believe I actually caught you off guard."

Her voice is still pitchy and perky, but her words a wee bit more articulate, and when she starts to unpack he feels a shiver run up and down his spine in cold waves, but he cannot think how to stop her. _She makes her own choices, now_, he tells himself. _What right do I have to send her away?_

_What right does she have to stay here?_

None, but she kicks off her shoes and he sees the blisters on her soles and the cracks on her heels and thinks that it might be gracious of him if he lets her stay for a while. She rubs lotion over her toes and asks him if he likes the smell of green tea, and when he makes no reply she admonishes that he has never been flirted with in his life. "You know, Vinnie, it's more fun if the guy flirts too," She says with no real anger, half-comical, but he has to look away when she stretches.

"It has never been my interest to accost you."

"Not even now?"

He does not want to answer that when Chaos spits obscenities into his mind, and the situation worries him more and more, but then she falls asleep and he is forced to lift her from the couch to the bed and take her place on the former, although he does not sleep at all that night. He decides that he will send her off the next day, only he doesn't – she stays another week and another, they subsist on meager groceries and on her findings from her day job, scouring the nearby grounds for materia. He doubts that they incur much value, and frequently poses the idea that she might look elsewhere, but she hastily changes the subject whenever he does.

One day she tells him that she will make an apple pie, because he never cooks any deserts, and while he grinds the graham crackers into crust she slices the apples and she says, she admits, "I'm not really sure why I'm staying here."

He does not choose to answer, and she cuts her thumb by accident. She gives a hiss of pain and heads for the sink, where she washes out the cut. Through the sputter of running water he makes out her careful whisper, "I think it's because I love you."

He stops grinding the crackers immediately – everything in him stops, his breath, his mind, his heart, because this cannot be happening.

She knows her confession was heard, and forgets to bandage her finger before resuming her task, silent as he is. After a moment he catches himself forgetting to live and lets his eyes slip towards her. There are tears running down her face and spilling into the apple-cuts, and her lips are trembling, although she appears not to notice. He starts towards her and she backs away, sucking on her thumb because the blood has not stopped flowing, and the motion makes him think that she is _still so much a child_.

"Forget I said that," she laughs. The sound is made worse by the fact that there is no way either of them can forget; he shakes his hand free of crumbs and runs to catch her before she crumples on the floor, eyes leaking worse than ever.

"I am sorry," he says,

"S-sorry," she cries,

and every slight passable feeling of peace is clouded by an acute sense of guilt on his part, and pain on hers, because they both know it's close to impossible.

It _is_ impossible.

After a moment they collect themselves; they finish making the pie and he starts on dinner while she excuses herself for a shower. The younger Yuffie would not be so composed, she would not take the situation with so much grace, but she is not the younger Yuffie. Her hair is still wet from her shower when she comes to the table, her face in a determined, albeit hard, smile. He sets her plate before her in silence, she blesses it with the graces of a Wutaian god, and before she has taken the first bite she attempts to start conversation, but nothing she says matters. They are shy and shifting and he thinks that things could not possibly get worse between them.

He pauses before a drink of wine, wonders if he will dare, and he does. "Why?"

She does not attempt to dance around it, does not try to avoid an answer, another thing the younger Yuffie would have done. "Gawds, Vinnie, of all the questions. I can't give you a good answer."

"You can try," he pushes, and he is unrelenting.

"Because I think you're lonely?" She tries a giggle; it dies in her throat. "Because I have nothing better to do? No, it's because, because it makes me sick that you're just _staying_ here when you could be doing so much more, because you shouldn't live this way, because I can't help it, all right, 'cause I've liked you since I was sixteen, 'cause you matter so much to me, 'cause" – she draws a breath - "cause maybe I can make you laugh and get you out of here, maybe I can't, but I want to try. I am _trying_," she gestures wildly at nothing.

He keeps his stare indifferent, but he feels broken inside, all of a sudden.

_I never meant for this to happen._

She excuses herself and goes outside. He decides to go to sleep. That night, she pushes him off the couch and tells him that she won't stay on his bed anymore because it's his, so he'd better get his hiney off and let her stay on the couch instead. He tells her he will do no such thing. They study each other for a moment, and then she kisses him and wrestles him against the cushions, and for the second time that day he forgets to breathe, and wraps his arms around her waist – and almost in the same second he pulls them away and calms himself. "We will share the bed, but that doesn't mean anything."

"I know that," she says stoutly, but she doesn't seem to; she hugs him from behind when it's a little past midnight, and he knows that this will be a long affair.

The weeks bleed into months and that is not the last time she kisses him, but he will not allow himself to return them, ever. Lucretia matters too much, his pain is too great, and Yuffie is too precious, too silly to know what she is doing.

The door remains broken.

* * *

A/N: I know it's very short - all three parts combined don't even reach 4000 words - but it seemed neater to divide it this way. I wrote this after I wrote the middle part, actually, so it's a little bit confusing; but all of them can actually stand as oneshots. Oh well. I apologize for the symbolical allegories. x.x For the record, I don't think their love story (after DoC and all possible sequels Squaresoft cooks up) would ever be this angsty - I don't think Yuffie would permit it - but this is just a take on how things _might be_.

Comments are always very greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading. :D


	2. The Eve

A/N: Thanks to everyone who commented earlier. :D This is my favorite chapter of the three, because I wrote it first and it still sits smoothest in my mind. I hope you enjoy it.

**Leaving Eden **

_**The Eve (In Passing)**_

She does not know the meaning of sin, and he refuses to be the one that teaches her.

He would be the best candidate, of course. He knows how much the burdens weigh, the heaviness that sits like coal and metal in one's heart. He knows the way a devil's tongue forks when it whispers persuasions in one's ear. He knows the unquenchable heat of flame that thirsts for blood and flesh and power; he knows all about hatred. He knows how hard and painful the fall from paradise is: one moment his hand is holding Lucretia's, the next moment Hojo is plating it in metal. He knows the grip it has on one's being.

He has never let go.

Vincent feels the numbing burn of sorrow every moment – it ripples inside him, in the monster-cells, in the tears of his cape and the way his hair grows pointed at the ends. His mouth has long stopped uttering confessions; instead he traces the myriad steps to damnation, his lips growing paler and paler, his tongue bitter with the taste of guilt.

He is reminded of the word forbidden when he looks at her. _Remember the serpents,_ he tells himself. _The beasts, the demons. _But they are lost to her smile and her teasing; they are lost to the shape of her head fitting under his chin as she whispers, "I love you, Vinnie." And when he says nothing in reply she sighs, irritated and full of resentment, although she is used to it.

She believes she can chase away the ghosts, wipe away the tears, cleans his soul of its sins, but no one is that powerful. And she pulls away from him again, mock tragic and moaning about how he never responds. "I'll leave for good," she threatens. "And you will miss me loads. You will kiss the pillow I slept on because it smells like me, and you will cry rivers into it because the loss is just too bad." But she does not go; he makes dinner and she makes tea and by midnight she is cuddling close to him again and he will not, _not_ commit another sin. He grows stiff and cold when her lips find his cheek and try to find his mouth.

"You shouldn't be here," he says. "Why are you here?"

"I tell you every day, but you never listen."

He is ripping her to shreds, and he knows it. He is tearing her to pieces, he is sucking the joy out of her spirit. But he cannot hold her – not with an arm like his. He will hurt her. He hurts her. Maybe she will go away. She cries and she punches him. He thinks she does not know quite how hard her fists are. She shouts obscenities and then, to his horror, she starts to laugh. "If I could leave you, I would. But I can't."

Then her giggles turn to hiccups and she buries them into his chest until it is soaked, while his human hand combs through her hair.

"Why can't I fix you, Vinnie? And why can't I leave you alone?"

The words sting him, like salt on an open wound; he feels crushed and empty and tender. More like a beast than ever. He does not answer, instead he says, "You will die here."

"And it'll all be your fault." Then she moves away from him and curls up, and he wishes once again that death would take him.

He does not mention it, but he is really full of envy, because they will have peace, they will have an end. When they have their eternal sleep they will not have nightmares and they will no longer wake from time to time to wonder why their hearts are still beating and their minds are overplaying bitter memories. He envies them, too, that they will not last forever having to recall what once was. Barret's wrinkles deepen, Cid's hair turns silver at the edges; soon Cloud will be stooped and Tifa decaying, and they will all become ashes, every one of them.

"I'll find a way for you to age normally again."

And her words would hurt less if her resolve wasn't so sincere.

"You should live before _you_ start getting too old," he tries to laugh, but he has never been good at laughter. It rasps out, it wheezes. It sounds mirthless. He averts his eyes. "Yuffie, don't do this. Don't hurt yourself for me."

She cannot explain herself; she scuffs a shoe across the floor and puts her hands on her hips. "Whatever. It doesn't matter." She goes on tiptoe, joking about how she will never grow another inch now that she is over twenty, and she gives him a chaste kiss. It lands smack on his nose, "Because your nose is long and huge, like my boots."

They talk about the boots, the weather, the weapons, materia, her country, his past when he has been drinking (he forgets to pry the bottle from her hands, and she does not remind him, claiming that she is old and sober enough). It is like they are married, but not. They never talk about tomorrow. Maybe she is hoping for something.

He knows what she is doing; he has done it before, staying in the cave with Lucretia, waiting for a miracle that he knows will never happen. "It's almost winter," She murmurs one night. The wind blows through the cracks in his broken door, and he remembers that the sun sleeps much earlier these days. She smiles when she looks up at him and something inside him gives way, breaks – she cannot stay here, she will spoil here. She is too beautiful and alive and happy to remain here. She has duties; she has so much to give Wutai, their friends, the world.

He has nothing to give her. He never did.

And he is worried that he might find it hard to let her go, if she stays any longer.

He cannot love her. She does not know the meaning of regret, and he does not intend for her to.

So he tells her, cold as the floor beneath their feet, the polished metal of his gun, the dying autumn: "I will never love you. Go away."

And she looks stricken and her lip wobbles but she takes it coolly. "I knew all that," still with enough spunk to sound self-assured. "I was just wondering if you'd ever say it. You've never had the balls." Then, because she cannot think what else to do, she throws her arms around him in a clumsy embrace and shouts that she hates him, and then, a little less hysterically, "I was never enough, was I?"

Yuffie never used to cry so much. He has broken her; he has started turning her into a monster too. He cannot let that happen. He is the one that was never enough, and will never be. Unless he agrees, she might keep hoping, she might linger...

So he keeps silent, and it is enough, because the next day he wakes up to empty nothing: she is gone.

_She does not know the meaning of sin, and now she won't have to._

He kisses the pillow she leaves behind, and he remembers the taste of regret.

* * *

A/N: The next and last chapter will be up soon enough. Thanks for reading this chapter. Comments are always greatly appreciated. :D


	3. The Angel

A/N: This is for everyone who read the angst and liked it, particularly those who commented. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

**The Angel (In Conclusion)**

Now and then he thinks he notices the seasons passing, but he has lost all notion of time – has it been a year or more, a month or less? The flowers wilt in winter, the flowers bloom in spring, and in the sticky heat of summer the flowers become glazed and buzzed over with bees, and he does not tend to his garden, he hardly ventures outside. Cid calls, on occasion – he hears the wailing of babies over the phone line, and the gruffness against the mechanic's lips that means he is smoking again, against everyone's better judgment. Tifa invites him to get-togethers every other month, and she asks how he is doing, if he needs any help. Reeve contacts him for certain jobs – he does not know that Vincent takes other offers, and makes his living that way. The seasons pass and his aim grows sharper, the phone rings and he does not hear her voice –

She never calls.

_She has no reason to._

Her scent has faded from the pillows, the tracks her boots left in the dust are removed by newer dirt and scratches, because sometimes he cannot help himself – he tears at the walls, at the floor, and the neighbors whisper about the ghosts who live in that house. It is no ghost, it is a demon, delirious with regret, destructive and desperate. He carves his pain into the wood and sometimes he thinks he might like to turn the claw on himself – but he's a coward, and he can't. It will not a change a thing; Hojo was not the head of the JENOVA project for nothing. He did his work meticulously, he left no openings for humanity.

That does not stop her laughter from ringing in his head – he indulges in whiskey and wine, in sadness, and one day he finds that she has replaced something priceless to him.

He has forgotten the cave, he has forgotten the scientist, he has exchanged _beautiful _for _pretty_, regret for possibility, but is too late. He has been saying her name instead, dreaming of her instead, and she is priceless, she means everything.

"Yuffie..."

And it's like dying all over again.

He wonders when she changed him, he wonders how she could; it wasn't when she called him boring when he first appeared to their party, it wasn't when she took their materia, it wasn't when she barfed all over victory after Meteor was destroyed. It wasn't when she followed him into the phone shop after the Geostigma epidemic was dealt with, it wasn't when she turned up later as head of intelligence in Reeve's organization. It wasn't when he came to Wutai for a very brief visit and she told him he could have her cats and then, _y'know, maybe the kittens because it's kinda hard for me to take care of them all alone_; it wasn't when she decided to stay and kissed him, right after they had made apple pie.

He can't put his finger on it.

The effort isn't worth it.

He tells himself it's guilt again, that he's feeling this way because he's sorry for what he has done to her. Even Chaos snorts at that, and monsters are quite impartial to love; _you fell good, Valentine_, he rasps, delighted that his host is having trouble. _But she's never coming back to you now, you always break the things you love, you always hurt yourself – it's kinda funny_, and he laughs migraines into Vincent's head. He takes a nap and has a short string of nightmares:

_She's against the bottom a cliff; she is fulfilling the Wutai marriage ceremonies; she is holding a baby against her chest but the child has a wicked smile and eyes that burn like a demon's; she is attempting to fight Sephiroth on her own, her knees are skinned and the bleeding just won't stop, she is standing by his doorframe looking uncertain and shy,_

But the last one isn't a dream. He blinks the sleep away and stares.

"Been a while," she says, and the understatement is highlighted by her grin and her eyes –

_- why can't she just stay away?_

"No," he says, he tries to say; she just waltzes into the room like she owns it (she _does_, she owns it and everything inside it, because she owns him, his feelings).

"You are the biggest bum in history," she proclaims, like it has been written in stone for the future centuries. "This place is a mess."

_I am a mess._

When he is finally able to speak again, he invites her to dinner, cordially, because it is already evening. She accepts the invitation with false haughtiness, and settles on the couch to wait. Trying to ignore the gravity of the situation, he begins to cook. "We stopped on a bad note," she tells him over the clinking that means she is sorting materia. "I don't want to die with any hard feelings for anyone, because it's possible that I will die very soon, my job being dangerous and exciting as it is. We may all die very soon. Yes, even you, Mr.-Never, you know, _never say never_!" And she seems to be fixed; there are no traces of tears in her voice, not the broken-glass that rang in it when she was staying with him.

When he throws back the usual reply of silence, she puts on her best ancient grandma voice and says, "Some things never change."

_Some things do. _Over dinner she looks at him through mouthfuls of pasta, and he cannot help himself staring into her eyes, just to see if she might be feeling the same way, because she's very good at pretending otherwise. _But if she does feel the same..._

It isn't like anything could be different. There is no _for the better_. He can only be for the worse.

"Percentages, Vinnie." He notices that she is rambling. "That's how I rate guys. Godo shows me off to marriage prospects, but I always gave Cloud ninety percent. The ten was taken away because he _so_ belonged to Tifa, but then after we beat Sephiroth he got another minus fifteen for becoming an angsty jerk. Still, he's got the best eyes –" She smiles, "Next to yours. How's your Crecia-meter doin', huh? Full on hundred percent, still?"

The tea is unfamiliar on his tongue – he has sipped nothing but alcohol and water in a long while. Maybe it is the alien taste that makes him say, "No, less."

She looks startled for a moment, and then she laughs. "Eighty?"

"Maybe thirty." And before he can stop himself he has reached across the table and caught her hand, and it feels so small and flimsy despite the calluses she suffered from gripping her throwing stars. She stands the same time he does, and their utensils clatter to the floor – the table gets in their way as they move towards each other, _and they can't help it_ – his lips are against hers, suddenly, maddeningly, it's strange to both of them, foreign, and her body relaxes in his hold but suddenly tenses again, rigid, and she pulls away, breathless, flushed, furious.

"If this is pity, I don't want it. That's not why I came back," her voice is low when she mutters, and she is tugging back her hand, trying to escape.

He drops his gaze and wants, not for the first time, to _die, die, die._

But he never will, and maybe for once it's worth trying to live - _but it won't change a thing, and we'll both get hurt _- his lips part anyway, and he whispers, "It's not like that. When you left – no, even before that, I felt something, something different. I knew it, too, but...I didn't want to hurt you." He swallows.

"I have nothing to give you. I have nothing but sins, and I didn't want to commit any more."

She stares at him for a moment, wide-eyed. Then she puts her fist up and he thinks she might slap him, but she _punches_ him instead. The impact rattles his skull. _I deserve it, _he tells himself, _and she's hating me, and she'll leave._

But she doesn't move at all. When lifts his head to look at her, she is laughing, although it is not a happy sound – it is anger and sadness, and some regret, but she catches his shirt and pulls him towards her – and they kiss another time, a longer time.

(He is no longer dying - he is dead.)

"You're so stupid, so stupidstupidstupid," She wobbles when they break away. He puts his hand against her cheek (and it's like silk) to try and wipe the tears. She sticks a finger up and wags it in his face, her mouth trembling because she is still weeping. "Don't you know? Omission is a sin too."

_And it's the truth._

He lets go -_ so many years late_, but it doesn't matter. (She's smiling.)

"I'll fix you," she tells him, but she already has, and suddenly he is aware that it is already spring.

* * *

A/N: This is all wrong in all sorts of places when I read it. D: (I'm not kidding.) It's messy and uses all sorts of stylistic techniques that didn't appear in the first two chapters, and I know it's all choppy, but...ack. I hope it served its purpose as a conclusion, anyway. x.x I haven't finished with this storyline yet, though: I have a oneshot in progress that takes place before these events (it's a prologue of the prologue?), and I'd be happy if you read that too, when it's up. I also might write another story as to how exactly Yuffie carries out this 'fixing' of hers, but the idea's still on probation. :D

Thanks for reading this twisted 'happy ending'. All comments would be very much appreciated.


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